Exasperated Yankees Lament a Long, Losing Night

Ian Desmond of the Rangers scored the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth inning in a game that began Monday night. He was one of four Rangers to score after the rain delay.Credit...Jim Mcisaac/Getty Images

By Seth Berkman

June 28, 2016

Before Tuesday night’s game, and just 14 hours after losing an immensely exasperating, rain-delayed affair to the Texas Rangers that ended at 2:45 a.m., Yankees Manager Joe Girardi was asked to describe his team’s personality.

“I think it’s a group that works very hard, is dedicated to improving every day,” Girardi said. “I think they have a close-knit group in there. They stick together.”

On Monday night, however, the Yankees were together for far longer than they wanted to be, dealing with a game in which they took a 6-5 lead into the top of the ninth, and, hours later, somehow ended up as 9-6 losers when the bottom of the ninth finally, and mercifully, concluded.

In a season of 162 games, players learn to put each result behind them and get ready for the next nine innings. But before Tuesday’s game, with rain again threatening, it was hard not to look back on the previous night’s events and try to make sense of them.

A good part of Monday’s game was actually played in the rain, but the teams kept going right into the top of the ninth, when the Yankees’ closer, Aroldis Chapman, came on to get the last three outs.

But Chapman could not grip the ball well amid all the raindrops and walked the leadoff hitter. He then went to a 3-1 count on the second batter of the inning, Shin-Soo Choo, at which point a concerned Girardi came out of the dugout to engage the umpiring crew.

The umpires huddled, and moments later, the game was halted and the tarp was rolled onto the field.

Would Girardi have come out of the dugout to complain about the conditions if Chapman had retired the first two batters in the ninth and was just one out from ending the game? Probably not. And in getting the game halted, he put the Yankees in position to win if the game never resumed. Except that it eventually did.

During the long delay, Girardi took off his jersey. Television cameras at one point showed Brett Gardner sitting alone in the dugout, not looking particularly pleased. Ivan Nova, who started the game, said various Yankee teammates became agitated as the wait went on for the rain to stop.

Over in the Rangers’ locker room, however, the mood was apparently more upbeat, perhaps because the players have the best record in the American League. Rangers Manager Jeff Banister said he occasionally left his office and poked his head into the locker room and saw that his players were dialed up and wanted the game to resume.

“They were still engaged and they were talking about the game, and they still had a little bit of agitation of being pulled off the field, so I could still hear the comments every so often,” Banister said. “And then there were guys that were still in the cage whacking away in the cage at 1:45 in the morning. I knew that they were still focused, that their mind-set was still in the game. I didn’t hear any talk of, ‘Let’s get out of here’ or anything like that. They truly wanted their opportunity.”

Banister told his team about 20 minutes before play resumed at 2:15 a.m. that the game would indeed go on, and within minutes the Rangers were back in the dugout. Nearly every Rangers player lined up against the railing, engaged in watching the grounds crew go to work on the soaked field.

And once Kirby Yates, who replaced Chapman, threw his first pitch when the ninth inning resumed, the dominant soundtrack of the game emanated from the Rangers’ side of the field. Players began twiddling the tips of their fingers in Yates’s direction, as if trying to cast a jinx.

The amateur voodoo may have worked. Yates hit three batters and gave up two hits that brought in four runs for the Rangers. At one point, with the bases loaded, Yates stepped off the rubber and in unison the Rangers players vocally reacted, trying to alert the umpire to a balk.

Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre, who hit the go-ahead single in the ninth, said the win might have been one of the most memorable victories of his career. Among the 50 or so fans who waited until the end were Beltre’s son, who, far past his bedtime, began screaming and jumping with Prince Fielder’s son once the Rangers took the lead.

“We didn’t want to go home until the game is over,” Rangers outfielder Nomar Mazara said. “If we had to play at 5, we’d play at 5.”

Girardi was not as open to recalling the loss. When the initial question of his pregame news media session on Tuesday evening was about Monday’s game, Girardi replied, “I think I shared my feelings last night, so I think we can move on.’’

Banister, who said he went to sleep at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, was understandably more effusive.

“For our guys to stay so engaged through the rain delay, determined to go back out on the field and at least have their shot at finishing the game in a competitive manner on the field, was in my opinion second to none and pretty spectacular,” he said.